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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23006116">this is the one where he tells you he loves you (and this is the one where you finally believe him)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lywinis/pseuds/Lywinis'>Lywinis</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lo(v)er - Carve it in the Bridge: A Reddie ficlet/one-shot listing [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, M/M, in this house we don't bury our gays, nor do we bury our Staniels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:14:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,407</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23006116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lywinis/pseuds/Lywinis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The world has moved on. And so it goes. Eddie finds it hard to adjust, sometimes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lo(v)er - Carve it in the Bridge: A Reddie ficlet/one-shot listing [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686373</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>236</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this is the one where he tells you he loves you (and this is the one where you finally believe him)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearfeathers/gifts">bearfeathers</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <pre>  <div class="center">
<em>I'm chemically drawn closer to you
Eyes wide, eyes wide open
Will you be my future or just an escape?
Love me, love me, love me

You'll never get to heaven on a night like this

Those nights when your friends are gone
When you're holding on for someone to leave with
Those nights when you crave someone
To be there at dawn, to wake with, 'cause aren't we all just
Looking for a little bit of hope these days?
Looking for somebody you can wake up with?</em>

-- Bastille, "Those Nights"</div>
</pre>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eddie felt the slivers of doubt slide down his spine, cold and gelatinous as he pulled up in front of the tapas place. Ben and Bev were in town, and it was his only real chance to see them before Bev’s crunch time at Fashion Week kicked off in London.</p><p>She was excited; of course she was. It was the first chance she’d had to step back into the design ring since her ex-husband’s disappearance. She’d faced the scandal, weathered it head on when the police investigation turned up nothing.</p><p>The Losers had all shared a look over video chat when she told them: Tom’s rental car had been found abandoned just outside the Kitchener Ironworks.</p><p>It had been perhaps too much to hope, but Eddie’s hunch on that seemed to be everyone else’s. The fucking clown was finally, finally useful. Either way, a year and a half after that absolute shitshow, Bev had been cleared of all charges, and had stepped back into her career. Now, after another solid six months of planning, she was ready to unveil another lineup. She was back, better than ever.</p><p>Eddie had never been one to be jealous of his friends’ success. They’d all ‘made something’ of themselves in the years since Derry. Growing up and growing older, it had all seemed to come together for them, even if they’d all been fucking miserable while doing it.</p><p>They were blooming after Derry, pushing through the blocks that had kept them in place before and breaking new ground. Flourishing, even. They’d all escaped, they’d fucking come out the other side. Maybe not smelling like roses, but upright, there and alive.</p><p>He slapped down the mental image of his mother scolding them after he’d broken his arm. She needed to stay in the ground where she was. Her voice as she called Bev those names—</p><p>He took a breath, then another. Another.</p><p>In fact, he told the specter of his mother as viciously as he could, he was so fucking proud to know all of them. They were his friends. His best friends. He loved them, the feeling beating fiercely in his chest like a caged bird.</p><p>He looked at his watch and realized he was dithering. His gaze was drawn, involuntarily, to where the pale skin of his ring finger stood out like a beacon.</p><p>His own life had been upended in the two years since he’d gone home. First, a separation, painful at first if only for the guilty slap-in-the-face feeling of relief when he and Myra had agreed on it. He hadn’t left her – no, it had been a mutual look, shared over takeout because she was too tired to cook and he was too tired to notice. They’d both known. It hadn’t even required an explanation.</p><p>It was like the scales had fallen from both their eyes, and the bitterness of his marriage had dissolved into a tentative friendship with his ex-wife. Their meetings were amicable, warmer than cordial. It was more than he expected. The divorce had been completed quietly, with little fanfare. Split his assets evenly down the middle, left Myra the house when she bought his half, and he was off, jetting to LA.</p><p>There had been no rhyme or reason for it, abandoning the life he’d built. It had felt like it was built for him, pressing in on him, pushing him back into an Eddie-shaped box, and he’d had enough of boxes built of others’ expectations for his life and behavior. So he’d rubber-banded like a balsa wood plane, wound too tight and released, zinging to the opposite coast and starting from scratch.</p><p>His company was small, but it was all his. He managed a team of burnt out risk analysts, lawyers, and consultants. They went in, cleaned house for a company, and then righted all that was wrong, knocking retaining walls right back to where they were supposed to be, bolstering them up from their sagging foundations. The second year had been better than the first, when he’d saved a company from going under over Christmas and by spring, they were turning a profit again.</p><p>A corporate corpse cleaner. The guys you call when no one else can get the job done. A fixer.</p><p>It involved sloughing off the dead weight – usually nepotism disguised as passing on the company from father to uninterested son. Hard truths, but easier to digest from a guy you were paying to tell you, who also happened to carry Tums in eight different flavors. Because he <em>got it</em>.</p><p>It wasn’t glamorous, but it was needed, and he was paid well. It was challenging, to him.</p><p>He could already hear Richie snoring.</p><p>It both infuriated him, and delighted him. It was dizzying and chaotic and absolutely idiotic and he gave himself a concerned look in the mirror.</p><p>He could say he hadn’t thought of Richie since Derry. It would be a lie. He had spent a lot of time thinking about the guy, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t healthy. His therapist hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of that part of his repression. He blew out a grumpy breath through his nose.</p><p>Richie didn’t know he was in LA. He’d been here for a year and a half.</p><p>That had been his concession to how far back into the closet he was wedged, his back braced against forgotten Christmas presents. He kept his New York number, carefully pulled his curtains closed on the nights he spent talking with his childhood friends. No one knew differently, that he’d upended his life, shaken out all the pieces of himself that he’d forgotten or kicked beneath the couch of his ‘perfect’ life.</p><p>
  <em>This is fine. You're not doing anything. You're not acting on anything. So it's fine. You're not doing anything wrong. Nothing's wrong because you haven't done anything. It's fine. It's all fine.</em>
</p><p>He said he was in town for business. <em>Not a lie.</em> He said he wanted to meet Bev and Ben for lunch. <em>Not a lie.</em> He missed them. <em>Not a lie.</em></p><p>The tapas place was a twenty-minute drive from his townhouse. <em>That was the lie.</em> His car had California plates. <em>That was the lie.</em> He hadn’t told them he was getting divorced. <em>That was the lie.</em></p><p>He wasn’t in love with Richie Tozier. <em>That was the lie.</em> The biggest, fattest whopper he’d ever conjured, developed around the time they’d been skinny, knobbly-kneed little shits and scared out of their wits.</p><p>That particular realization had kicked him in the teeth, about six months out of Derry. He’d been watching one of Richie’s Netflix specials, because he’d woken short of breath and with tears streaking his face and pillow. The guest bedroom of his and Myra’s house had been converted into a sick room for him while he recovered, his shoulder twinging painfully as he healed. It was on the ground floor so he didn’t have to navigate the stairs. It had the added bonus of buffering him from Myra when he had nightmares.</p><p>He’d been grateful for the ache of a mending shoulder. It had made him break the surface of unconsciousness.</p><p>He remembered being stabbed. Remembered the absolutely horrified look on Richie’s face as his blood had smeared his face. Things had gotten hazy right after, but that part had been seared behind his eyelids like the after image of an atomic bomb.</p><p>To banish the <em>paper-white-streaked-with-red</em> from his brain, Richie’s <em>scared-wide-terrified-eyes</em>, the crushed static hum of anxiety creeping into panic, he’d flicked on the TV and put on one of Richie’s standup specials. Listening to Richie’s voice, the cadence of words, the Maine accent that had been punched and slapped into a smoother, more neutral Californian one, it made the buzzing beneath his skin quiet a little.</p><p>It was Richie, and yet it wasn’t.</p><p>The jokes were fake. He could always tell. Richie had tells. He wasn’t a shit liar, by any means, but there was a difference to lying to parents who didn’t seem to care – and later they’d compared notes, figured out that it was Derry that did that, made adults care-but-not, made them useless. No, it was the cadence. It was the way the words fell. You could tell someone else was putting the sentences into Richie’s mouth, moving his jaw. Like a gangly, foul-mouthed puppet. It had none of the flair of his stories from childhood, none of the manic, frenetic energy of someone who was funny without trying, just because of who he was.</p><p>Eddie had no idea how Richie had let them beat him into that sort of box. It was familiar, a tingle on the back of his tongue that tasted like albuterol and private shame.</p><p>Richie’s eyes were dead as he parroted the words. He looked like someone wearing his friend’s face, the smile never reaching his eyes, crinkling the corners like he did when he howled about having sex with someone’s mother. Eddie had shut the TV off, unsettled.</p><p>This wasn’t his Richie. Their Richie, he’d amended, even as he secretly thought the first had been the most correct. It was ugly, the feeling in his chest.</p><p>The next week, Bill had called. He was followed closely by the others. Their weekly video chats had become a thing. He’d begun to sleep easier. He got them all, overwriting memories of pain and terror with laughter and good-natured insults. He could replace Richie being scared out of his mind with him falling asleep because time differences are a bitch but like hell was he gonna miss them.</p><p>He could keep that, Richie soft and drowsy and barely there, until he finally dropped his phone on his face, to everyone’s raucous laughter.</p><p>It had gradually gotten better.</p><p>A knock on the window startled the shit out of him. He jerked, his fist hitting the horn and shocking him into a litany of <em>fuck-fuck-fuck</em> before he looked up, spotting Bev’s grin around a cloud of her impish red hair. Short hair looked good on her, always had, and she brushed it out of her eyes, pointing at the restaurant.</p><p>He looked at his watch again and realized he’d been sitting in the parking lot, freaking out for twenty minutes.</p><p>It was a good thing he’d left early, planning on getting there before the others, he supposed.</p><p>He got his shit together, as well as he was able, and opened the door. “You absolute goddamn gremlin, what the fuck are you laughing at?”</p><p>She wrapped him in a hug, and he squeezed her tight, feeling how she clung to his suit jacket. Bev smelled like sunshine and looked like a fey creature given life, her smile upturning at the corners as she pulled back. It grounded him, knowing he was missed. Knowing he was loved. If she was a little teary, he wouldn’t tell.</p><p>He was, too.</p><p>They’d all met up, in twos and threes, over the last year or so. As their schedules allowed, they drifted into each other’s orbits again. There had been general rumbles of a get-together over Christmas, and Eddie planned to clear his schedule once they wheedled Stan into opening his home to them. (He was convinced they’d ruin his image to Patti. Richie had gotten a lot of mileage out of that one.)</p><p>Eddie felt Bev’s lips on his cheek, over his scar, and he tried not to duck his head, tuck his shoulders around his ears. To hunch into himself like a turtle. She did it again, to make a point, and he looped her arm with his as they walked into the restaurant.</p><p>“Where’s Ben?” he asked. “You guys have been joined at the hip for months.”</p><p>“Getting drinks,” she said, leaning into him and giving him. “You look good, Eddie.”</p><p>“You look amazing,” he said.</p><p>She squeezed his arm, understanding – or at least he thought she might.</p><p>There was a subtle, certain difference between long distance and in-town. Eddie could mark it by the fact that light hit Bev’s face different in person, video resolution petering out and giving him a ghost of what she was. Now, though, he was pressed against her, warm and alive.</p><p>Real life looked good on Beverly Marsh. The smile agreed with her, and her easy laugh had come to the fore after Derry. It wasn’t hard to get her to laugh while they were together, but it looked like she smiled more. Like him, the smudges of sleepless nights persisted around her eyes, but it just added to the anchor of her being there and alive for him. That quieted the static of his life, and he sighed out, the tension between his shoulders ebbing as they crossed the threshold.</p><p>Only to be ratcheted to his spine like a thick steel cable when he caught sight of Ben and Richie chatting at a circular booth in the corner.</p><p>Bev, attached to Eddie as she was, must have felt it. If she did, she had the goddamned grace to let him suffer in silence.</p><p>“I didn’t realize he was back from his tour,” Eddie said. You know, like a liar. He knew perfectly well. Richie kept up a running commentary of all the shitty airports he was stuck in, constantly, in the group chat. (He had a good off-the-cuff riff about Dallas-Fort Worth that made it onto Letterman and Eddie had given him shit about it for a month.)</p><p>Bev let him have his dignity. “He got back last night. Said he wanted to see us while we were in LA.”</p><p>There was no <em>I hope you don’t mind</em> because that wasn’t the type of friends they were. Where one was, the others soon followed, piling in on each other in comfort. Eddie would have never asked for it, nor expected it.</p><p>He was still about six fucking miles from okay when Ben turned their way, his eyes finding Bev like a beacon. He nudged Richie and they both unfolded themselves from the booth, grinning at them.</p><p>“Eduardo!” Richie called. “Fancy seeing you here!”</p><p>“Did they finally kick you out of the cardboard box you were living in?” Eddie asked, giving Richie a nod. He was dressed LA schlubby; wrinkled jeans, beat-up sneakers and a t-shirt declaring that it was <em>Mardi-GRAWR</em>, complete with a t-rex festooned in colorful beads and a purple, green and gold tuxedo.</p><p>He looked good.</p><p>Fuck him.</p><p>Richie hooted. “It’s good to see you too, Junior GQ.”</p><p>He scooped Eddie into a hug that almost devolved into a headlock, had Eddie not shoved at Richie’s broad chest. He smelled good, something masculine that was likely just Richie, this late in the day. Eddie found his palms tingling.</p><p>They packed into the booth. Despite not really having room, Eddie found himself missing the rest of the Losers. Mike, Bill, and Stan were missing out. They’d have dragged more tables together, crammed as close as could be. A single soul stretched between seven bodies, loosely in orbit.</p><p>Richie bookended Eddie between himself and Ben in the circular booth. Despite the feel of Richie’s long thigh pressing against his own, Eddie managed to jam an elbow in Richie’s ribs. He was penned in, and it almost felt like they were trying not to let him get away.</p><p>As if he’d bolt if they let him sit on the outside.</p><p>Ben giggled a little, passing Eddie a glass of water. “We haven’t gotten anything yet.”</p><p>“Sorry I’m late,” Eddie said. “I guess I’m not used to traffic.”</p><p>“Uber, my dude.” Richie fiddled with the label of his beer bottle. “’Specially this time of day.”</p><p>Eddie almost blurted that he knew how LA traffic worked, but stopped himself. Why would he? Especially just as well as Richie? That would out him just as well as if he announced it.</p><p>“I guess,” he said instead, earning him a look.</p><p>“You jet-lagged, Eds?” Richie asked, peering at him. Eddie felt like he was being peeled open and dissected.</p><p>“No. Just tired.” He pushed at Richie. “You have like, a whole fucking seat open next to you. Scoot over, asshole.”</p><p>Richie snorted laughter, but adjusted, scooting over. Eddie felt like he could breathe again. Richie promptly shoved his legs into Eddie’s space, tangling them.</p><p>“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie snapped.</p><p>“Fuck <em>you</em>,” Richie retorted, and they were off, verbally slap fighting in between catching Ben and Bev up on their lives and in general, just enjoying each other’s company. Their shoulders bumped, they tussled for leg space, and Eddie had never felt happier.</p>
<hr/><p>Tapas in LA was healthier than probably getting it anywhere else, but it was still a spread and a half, to the point where Eddie thought the goal might be to eat themselves to death. <em>Albóndigas, gazpacho, mejillones rellenos, chorizo la cidra, chopitos</em>, it was as though Richie and Ben had already gotten to the ear of the server.</p><p>She seemed to recognize Richie, but kept it to herself, for which Eddie was grateful. It was still a weird slap in the face watching Richie get recognized. Having to share him. A small, mean voice deep in the back of his head whispered that only the Losers got that. A smaller, meaner voice reminded him why he was jealous. He punted both voices back into the goddamned closet.</p><p>Eddie ordered himself a beer, a rare indulgence in the late afternoon, usually reserved for a business lunch and usually only sipped at. Here, though, his knees knocking into Ben and Richie, his sides hurting from laughter, it was pure enjoyment.</p><p>One turned into two, then three. He was feeling pretty floaty by then, but it wasn’t a problem. He was caged in, safe. He could leave if he wanted to.</p><p>He didn’t.</p><p>Between Ben and Richie, the food was being demolished, but there was still a lot left almost an hour and a half later. Eddie reached for the last skewer of <em>pincho moruno</em>, the spices dancing across his tongue. His hand collided with Richie’s.</p><p>“Dibs,” Richie called, and Eddie slapped the back of his hand, making Richie swear and drop the skewer back on the plate.</p><p>“I swear, I don’t know where the fuck you put it all,” Eddie groused, taking the skewer. A petty part of him whispered at him to eat the whole damn thing in front of Richie, but instead he peeled half the lamb from the skewer with his teeth and handed the other half to Richie. “Hollow leg motherfucker.”</p><p>Richie took it, not breaking eye contact as he finished it, dropping the skewer back onto his plate.</p><p>“I work it off with vigorous sex,” Richie said. “Your mom’s a saint like that.”</p><p>Eddie finished his beer.</p><p>It was fine. Things were fine.</p><p>“Eat a dick,” he snapped, leaning more against Ben’s side.</p><p>“You first,” Richie retorted.</p><p>“I should have just given it to Bev,” Eddie said.</p><p>“Rude. Wow. With friends like you, who needs enemas.”</p><p>Bev wiggled her skewer at Richie, who shot her the bird, since she’d stocked up before they descended on the food. Eddie cackled, nudging Ben, who had an arm around Bev and was happily working his way through a skewer of his own.</p><p>Things were fine. They were better than fine. They hadn’t changed. That was what Eddie needed.</p>
<hr/><p>He bullied Richie out of the booth so he could use the restroom, slipping away so he could get a breath. It was on his way back that he spotted one of his clients, and he hurried past, hoping he didn’t catch the guy’s eye.</p><p>No such luck, though.</p><p>“I thought that was you!” Jack Snyder said. He shook Eddie’s hand vigorously. “How the hell are you, Edward?”</p><p>He was the typical alpha male Californian CEO, operating a tech startup out of Fresno, branching into LA and San Francisco.</p><p>Jack ran a hand through his hair, the salt-and-pepper of a man who’s getting up there but who lives well so he can afford to go grey gracefully. He had sharp features, a broad, graceless jaw, an aquiline nose, and a slash of a mouth that was nicer when he smiled.</p><p>Eddie, if he were someone else, might have been attracted. Instead, he and Jack had a mutual agreement that they were two prickly assholes and that they told each other how it was too harshly for Eddie to see anything but a man spoiling for a fight. Being that he was also constantly spoiling for a fight, it would be mutually destructive.</p><p>Besides, he had other things to worry about.</p><p>He and Eddie had butted heads about his offices until Eddie had slapped down the numbers, told him to either shit or get off the pot, and had commenced to cleaning the whole company of dead weight. New, fresh employees were hired to fill gaps in skills, qualified employees who were hungry for a change. People who were poor fits for their job were restructured elsewhere or given generous severances, which Jack had bitched about until he looked at the next fiscal quarter’s numbers. It had been more profitable by far to do it Eddie’s way, and the press about their layoffs had been positive, rather than sparking outrage and panic in the economy.</p><p>Amazing what a little fucking human decency could do.</p><p>“Good, Jack,” Eddie said, confined by business rules of politeness now. A ‘fuck off’ danced on his tongue, put there by Richie’s presence, but he swallowed it back, wishing he wasn’t so rumpled. “How’s things now that we’ve finished up with the Palo Alto offices?”</p><p>“Things are good,” he said.</p><p>“You sign off on those benefits packages I recommended?” Eddie asked.</p><p>“You’re busting my balls here,” Jack said, a fake grumble because Eddie had shown him exactly how he could afford it the first four times he’d brought it up.</p><p>“Churn is your biggest concern, remember?” Eddie said. “Keeping employees is key to getting the results you want.”</p><p>They stared at each other for a long moment until Jack nodded. Eddie, full of smug satisfaction, folded his arms and leaned back on his heels. He could bask in that; he’d fought hard enough for it.</p><p>“Listen, I can’t thank you enough,” Jack said. “Our quarterlies tripled, the stockholders are going nuts.”</p><p>“That’s great,” Eddie said.</p><p>“I keep telling you, you need to come work for me,” Jack said. “I’d set you up.”</p><p>“No thanks, Jack,” Eddie said. He grinned. “I like being my own boss too much.”</p><p>“Damn,” Jack said. “Worth a shot.”</p><p>His gaze drifted over Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie turned, catching sight of Richie standing in the hallway. Richie’s expression seemed carefully shuttered. He felt his neck prickle, like something had passed between them, but Richie just lifted his hand in a two-fingered wave and pushed his way into the men’s room.</p><p>“Friend of yours?” Jack asked.</p><p>“You could say that,” Eddie replied.</p>
<hr/><p>They tumbled out into the warm air, summer in LA still holding on through September. Eddie crammed his hands into his pockets, knowing that he could just tell them his car was a company car, but it meant that he’d have to drive away, and he wasn’t ready to go home to his empty apartment just yet.</p><p>Instead, he talked with Ben while Richie and Bev shared a cigarette. Bev claimed she was quitting, but it was nostalgia that was killing their lungs today, apparently. Eddie held off a lecture only because they had to leave soon. The two lovebirds would be flying out in the morning, so they declined Richie’s offer of hitting the bars and tearing up the town tonight, with a promise for a raincheck.</p><p>The sun was setting, and Eddie realized that they’d spent the better part of half the day together without him noticing. It was always that way with the Losers, though. The soft and fuzzy feeling of time dilating, stretching like warm, sweet taffy because you’re having fun. Feeling like it’s endless, until it pinches and folds and comes back on itself, leaving him both breathless and elated. A sugar rush, complete with the crash.</p><p>
  <em>Then you look up and everyone’s moved away, and Derry’s empty. Mike’s still here but he’s working the farm and he doesn’t come around. Your mom forbids you from going to college or getting a job and—</em>
</p><p>Ben squeezed his shoulder, and he startled. “You okay, man?”</p><p>His dark chocolate eyes were worried, looking him over. Eddie gave a full-body shudder, like he was pushing away a night terror.</p><p>“Yeah,” Eddie said, waving him off. “Just thinking.”</p><p>Always thinking, circling the drain where the voices are.</p><p>“You sure?” Ben asked. “Because you were a million miles away.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Eddie said, the words sliding from between his teeth.</p><p>“We hardly see you except on video calls,” Ben said. Eddie flinched. It wasn’t accusatory. If anything, it was gentle, like Ben was afraid he was going to spook him.</p><p>“Yeah, I—” Eddie scrubbed a hand down his face, as though to banish the faraway look he didn’t realize he was wearing. “It’s been crazy, getting things up off the ground since…you know.”</p><p>He waved a non-committal hand. Since recovery. Since his divorce. Since his move. Since Derry.</p><p>Ben nodded. “Hey, don’t feel like you have to talk, but…you know where we are if you need to.”</p><p>“I know,” Eddie said, blowing out a breath. “We’re all just sort of…moving on. It’s hard.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Ben said. He looked Eddie over for a moment, then tugged him to his chest and wrapped his arms around him. “But that doesn’t mean we’ve gotta do it alone, you dummy.”</p><p>Eddie’s arms came up and around him, gripping the back of Ben’s shirt. He felt grounded, like someone had strung a line to reality for him for a moment, so he wouldn’t float off into space. He pressed his ear to Ben’s shoulder, hearing him breathe.</p><p>“All right, you nerds, get a room.” Richie’s voice cut through the moment, and they broke apart, only for Richie to sling his arms around the both of them. “I’m gonna miss the fuck outta you guys.”</p><p>“You just saw us last month,” Bev protested. “We caught your show in Chicago.”</p><p>Eddie felt guilt slide an icy finger up his spine. He hadn’t been to any of the live shows, hadn’t tried to be there, physically. It had always been…too close to an admission. When was the last time he’d made time for them before this? He couldn’t remember, other than the video calls. He missed them, too.</p><p>Richie simply herded her close, bringing them all together and squeezing them.</p><p>“Doesn’t matter, I still miss the fuck outta you guys.”</p><p>“All right, all right,” Eddie said, pushing on his side. Richie let him go, and Eddie almost regretted it. Instead, he put his hands on his hips. “Someone has a flight to catch in the morning, so let the loves of your life go.”</p><p>“Aw, there’s no one for me but your mom, Eduardo,” Richie said. Eddie took a swipe at him but he hopped back, laughing.</p><p>Ben and Bev circled Eddie, giving him his own hug. He endured it, trying not to cling. They promised to call on the weekend, and he promised to pick up. He and Richie watched the tail lights of their Uber vanish into traffic.</p><p>“What about you, big man?” Richie asked after a long beat of silence, punctuated only with traffic noises.</p><p>“What about me?” Eddie asked. He realized they were by themselves now, something he’d carefully avoided doing since his move here.</p><p>“What time does your flight leave?” Richie asked. “You never said.”</p><p>There was no plane. Just a townhouse where he would go to bed and get up and do it again, over and over for the rest of his life. For a while, that had been fine, taking it one day at a time.</p><p>Now, he wasn’t so sure.</p><p>“I didn’t,” he said, instead. “Why?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Richie said, shrugging. “Just wondered if you’d be up for hitting the town.”</p><p>“Really? I figured you’d think I was boring.”</p><p>Richie blinked at him. The lights from the cars made his eyes look huge, masked behind the lenses of his glasses.</p><p>Eddie felt too sober for this conversation. For any conversation with Richie at all. He was stretched thin and yet not, and he would shatter like glass at the slightest provocation. He wanted to scream.</p><p>“I just…haven’t seen you in forever,” Richie said. Eddie almost missed it, his voice was so quiet, it was nearly lost in the rumble of vehicles across asphalt.</p><p>“Yeah,” Eddie said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve just been. Busy.”</p><p>“So have I,” Richie said. He looked away, and Eddie felt equilibrium come back, somewhat. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to hang out.”</p><p>
  <em>You’re braver than you think.</em>
</p><p>“Well, are you gonna stand there, or are you gonna show me around?” Eddie asked.</p><p>Richie grinned at him, big and broad and stupid, and Eddie felt like his heart would snap free of his ribs, only to be placed securely in Richie’s too-big palms. The worst part, the absolute fucking bitch of the situation was this: Eddie knew that Richie would close his hands over his heart and he’d never fear for it again.</p><p>That was why it was terrifying.</p>
<hr/><p>He and Richie huddled in a crowded bar. They’d grabbed a table at the back and were currently doing rounds of drinks while they caught up. Eddie was a sheet to the wind, but he’d been pacing himself, just to be able to say he tried to prolong this in the best way possible.</p><p>He giggled into his drink. “You’re a fucking asshole.”</p><p>Richie, who’d been in the middle of a story from his tour, just grinned at him. “You say the sweetest things, Eds.”</p><p>Eddie rolled his eyes. “There’s no way you and John Mulaney hung out. He’s too uptight. You’re like, the anti-John Mulaney.”</p><p>“Nah, we did. He’s actually pretty cool,” Richie said. There was a beat, and the dim lights over their booth almost hiding his mouth turning up at the corners. It was like a slow fuse being lit. That signature Richie Tozier <em>look</em>, the one that said ‘I’ve got you now, I know I’m funny so you better be prepared, you fuck’. “Reminds me of Stan.”</p><p>“Oh, he’ll kill you,” Eddie said, taking a swallow of his drink and nearly choking. He coughed up his lungs, wheezing laughter as Richie pounded on his back. “He’ll murder you.”</p><p>“He’s gotta catch me first,” Richie said.</p><p>Eddie’s laughter turned a little shrill, and he buried his head in his hands. “You fucking asshole. He’s gonna catch you. He’s in better shape than you are.”</p><p>“Yeah, probably,” Richie conceded, grinning at Eddie.</p><p>“How are he and Patti doing?” Eddie asked. “Like, really doing.”</p><p>“He seems happier,” Richie said, walking carefully around the subject as he sobered a little. “He was talking about taking his teaching job again and then tutoring over the summer.”</p><p>Stan had probably the roughest run, post Derry. Eddie couldn’t bring himself to visit. He’d been avoiding it, if only because he had no idea what he’d <em>say</em>. He wasn’t angry—farthest thing from it. It was probably worse to tell Stan that he <em>understood</em> why he tried what he tried.</p><p>Why would Stan want to hear about how when faced with the same choice, Eddie had chosen to return because he was too much of a coward to do anything else?</p><p>“We should go,” Eddie said instead. “For Christmas.”</p><p>“You want to?” Richie asked, brows rising.</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I?” Eddie asked. It came out petulant and combative, and he hated it.</p><p>“Dunno,” Richie said. He leaned back in his chair, his arm slung over the back. Eddie could feel the weight of his eyes on him, and he hated how his skin felt livid with electricity. “You just didn’t seem really into visiting anyone. I mean, at first, yeah, your shoulder. But now—”</p><p>“I—” Eddie started to argue, but clicked his jaw shut. The worst part was that Richie was right. He’d always begged off. Always had an excuse. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”</p><p>“You always pick up first for the calls,” Richie said. Eddie jerked, his knee connecting with the underside of the table.</p><p>“Fuck—” He bent double, hissing as he rubbed at the point of his knee. He looked up at Richie, feeling like a deer in the headlights. “How—”</p><p>“I have eyes, Eds.” Richie shrugged. “They might not work right half the time but it doesn’t mean I don’t see you.”</p><p>Eddie pushed back from the table. “I should go.”</p><p>He squirmed past Richie after tossing some bills on the table. One of Richie’s hands snaked out, catching his wrist. He looked down, and got a full face of Richie giving him an inscrutable, shuttered look.</p><p>“What are you looking for?”</p><p>Eddie’s wrist burned. He jerked his hand away, and Richie let him go. He stumbled out into the night and walked back to his car, his brain buzzing like an angry hornet.</p>
<hr/><p>He woke up with cotton mouth and three text messages. One was from work, advising him that his contract with one of Jack’s friends was drawn up and waiting on him to sign. One was from Bev, letting him know they were off and she’d text him when they landed. She sent him a selfie of her and Ben on the plane, stretched out in first class like it was their honeymoon.</p><p>The last one was from Richie and he put his phone face down on the side table before he did something dumb like open it up.</p><p>That was why he didn’t visit. That was why he tried to limit his exposure. Controlled dosage of one Richie Tozier was advisable. Preferable.</p><p>Maybe then he could get over whatever this was that he was feeling.</p><p>He sat up, and tried to start his Saturday.</p>
<hr/><p>He made it through half the day before he reached for his phone. He communicated through his laptop and avoided the phone face down next to him until lunch. Then his phone rang.</p><p>It was time for the Losers’ to convene, and he’d forgotten. He stared at his phone, watching the bubble of the group chat float in front of his eyes.</p><p>He couldn’t. He <em>couldn’t</em>.</p><p>He thumbed the button open. Bev and Ben smiled up at him from his phone. Bill connected soon after, and Mike followed Stan. Richie was nowhere to be seen.</p><p>Eddie’s heart did a little lurch.</p><p>“Hey, guys,” he said.</p><p>“Hey!” Bill called. “My internet is…not great. Writer’s retreat.”</p><p>Eddie got the impression that he knew how full of static his line sounded.</p><p>“Working on the new book?” Stan asked.</p><p>“Just the ending.”</p><p>“Good,” they all chorused. Eddie laughed with them, almost—but not quite—forgetting that Richie wasn’t there.</p>
<hr/><p> The problem with living alone, Eddie mused as he sipped his water, was that if one did not keep busy, one was likely to go pretty crazy. He drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair, unable to concentrate on the novel that he’d been staring at and pretending to read for the last hour. Sighing, he tossed the bookmark back in the book and set it aside, turning his head to regard his phone.</p><p>He thumbed it open, navigating to his texts and pressing the little bubble with Richie’s name and number on it. It took him a second to decode Richie’s shorthand. Possibly typed while still drunk, it was almost—</p><p>Oh.</p><p>
  <em>[I’m sorry I freaked you out. I don’t have to come to group stuff if it bothers you.]</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>Oh.</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>Panic clawed at him. He’d let this <em>sit there</em>. Thumbs rapped over the keyboard.</p><p>
  <em>[You didn’t freak me out. It’s been a—]</em>
</p><p>He stopped, then backspaced, trying again.</p><p>
  <em>[There’s been a lot going on, Rich. I’m sorry.]</em>
</p><p>He put the phone face down again, resisting the urge to hop up and start pacing. The text message chimed and he fumbled with his phone, almost dropping it.</p><p>
  <em>[I just wanted to say that I have a spot on SNL later this month. And I’ll be in New York. I’d like to hang out.]</em>
</p><p>Eddie inhaled.</p><p>
  <em>[Is that bad?]</em>
</p><p>Richie’s typing indicator stopped. Eddie swallowed hard before he replied.</p><p>
  <em>[So, you’re leaving me for John Mulaney?]</em>
</p><p>It took Richie a minute to start typing again.</p><p>
  <em>[I’m serious, Eds. Myra probably hates us, so if you can’t, I get it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But I just</em>
</p><p>
  <em>We almost lost you]</em>
</p><p>Eddie felt nauseous.</p><p>
  <em>[I just </em>
</p><p>
  <em>miss the fuck out of you]</em>
</p><p>His fingers were moving before he really registered what he was doing. He typed up his address and sent the text before he could change his mind.</p><p>
  <em>[???]</em>
</p><p>
  <em>[Come see me.]</em>
</p>
<hr/><p>Eddie nearly jumped out of his skin when the doorbell went. He had no idea what he was doing, and yet, here he was. Carefully, he set his book aside and got up to open the door. It felt like a walk to the executioner’s block.</p><p>Richie stood on his doorstep. Eddie knew that, he’d sent the text himself. It just didn’t seem real, like he was watching it from outside his body. Richie lurched forward woodenly, wrapping his arms around Eddie. That grounded him, and he let the door swing shut, wrapping his arms around Richie and burying his nose in the taller man’s shoulder.</p><p>“Fuck,” Richie said, muffled against his hair. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“For what?” Eddie mumbled.</p><p>“I didn’t ask, I’m sorry, I—”</p><p>“Richie.” Eddie leaned back, looking up at him. “Don’t be sorry. I missed you, too, dude.”</p><p>They broke apart, Eddie with a stab of guilt for how he lingered. He stepped aside and Richie passed from the front hall to the living room.</p><p>Richie looked around him. “This is a nice Airbnb. Didn’t realize they rented townhomes in this area.”</p><p>“It’s—” Eddie stopped, then started again. “It’s not an Airbnb.”</p><p>“Oh.” Richie let out a low whistle. “Your company keeps apartments out here? Damn, Eds, you’ve come up in the world.”</p><p>“Ah,” Eddie said, frowning. “That’s not it, either. I live here.”</p><p>Richie went very still. “What?”</p><p>“This is my townhome. I own it, Richie.”</p><p>“What about Myra?” Richie asked.</p><p>“What about her?” Eddie asked, patient. “She kept the house.”</p><p>Richie stared at him.</p><p>“Not wearing my ring, am I?” Eddie asked, splaying his hands out in front of him. “Didn’t wear it to lunch, either.”</p><p>“Your job—”</p><p>“I own the company,” Eddie said. “Started it and got it on its feet last year.”</p><p>“The guy in the hallway, then—”</p><p>“A client of mine,” Eddie said, remembering Jack’s interruption at the tapas restaurant. “He was thanking me for what we do. I pulled his company out of the hole last year.”</p><p>“…when?” Richie asked. He looked like he might hurl, pale and shaky.</p><p>“A year and a half ago?” Eddie said. “Give or take.”</p><p>“And you’ve been out here. A year and a half. Single.”</p><p>“Roughly,” Eddie said.</p><p>Richie inhaled.</p><p>“You little <em>creep</em>!” he shouted, and Eddie was glad that his neighbors didn’t actually live at their properties for a good period of time. Both residences on either side of him stood empty. As it was, Richie’s justifiable outburst set a neighborhood dog barking and Eddie himself flinched. “You’ve been out here for that long and didn’t—”</p><p>“I didn’t want it to be fucking weird, okay?” Eddie flushed, glancing away as he burst out. “Because you’d be like, ‘hey, come and stay with me, it’ll be okay’ and it wouldn’t.”</p><p>“But you could have!” Richie said, flailing his hands as he gestured. “I wouldn’t have minded!”</p><p>“I would have,” Eddie said. “That would have been pathetic and I’ve been pathetic enough in front of you.”</p><p>Richie snapped his jaw shut, the muscle jumping erratically. Eddie hunched into himself, trying and failing to meet Richie’s eyes.</p><p>“So, that’s why I can’t meet you in New York,” Eddie said. He cleared his throat. “And why I didn’t visit everyone as much as I could have. Having to explain why I was coming from LAX, or god forbid, running into you at the airport.”</p><p>“I’m sorry I’m that fucking horrible,” Richie said, jaw jumping faster. Eddie had the wild thought that if he clenched his teeth harder than that, he’d snap his jaw.</p><p>“No!” Eddie snapped it. “You asshole. <em>No.</em> It’s not like that.”</p><p>“Then what’s it like?” Richie ground out.</p><p>“Because I love you, you insufferable <strong>dick</strong>!” Eddie said, his voice cracking as he burst out with it. He clamped a hand over his own mouth, eyes wide and fixed on Richie. They were frozen, for a moment, staring at each other with too-bright eyes. He slowly lowered his hand, frowning. “I’m sorry. <em>Oh, god. I’m <strong>sorry</strong>.</em> You didn’t need—”</p><p>Richie surged forward, invading Eddie’s space, cupping his jaw as he crashed their mouths together. Their teeth clicked together but Eddie didn’t so much mind the bright bloom of pain that came with having Richie Tozier in his space, making his brain go wobbly in a way that was unfamiliar and like coming home at the same time. He dug his fingertips into broad shoulders, Richie grunting as he did and pulled back for air.</p><p>“Asshole,” Eddie said, fondly. “I could have chipped a tooth.”</p><p>“Worth it,” Richie said. “I’m sure we can find a dentist on a Saturday night.”</p><p>Eddie cupped the side of Richie’s neck. “You chaotic fucker.”</p><p>He was grinning, though. Richie was grinning back. It was…god, it was good, it felt good, despite the pain in his teeth. For a second, though, something nagged at Eddie, and his smile faded.</p><p>“You asked me if it bothers me when you show up,” Eddie said. “Why?”</p><p>Richie shifted, and Eddie could almost see the switch flip. His expression shuttered, became carefully neutral, and he looked away.</p><p>“I told you how I felt a long time ago,” he said. “When you were in the hospital.”</p><p>“What?” Eddie asked.</p><p>“Yeah,” Richie said. “The first time you woke up. I thought you remembered.”</p><p>“Richie. I was soaked to the gills in opiates. I could barely form a sentence.” Eddie’s brows shot up. “Did you really?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Richie said, scrubbing the heel of his palm against his eyes. “I just kept asking for you to wake up, and when you did, I blurted it out. You were always so standoffish I thought it was just that you remembered but you didn’t like it.”</p><p>“I remember thinking that whatever they had me on was nice,” Eddie said. “Because it meant that you were there. For a long time, I thought I hallucinated you. Dilaudid is a hell of a fucking drug, Rich.”</p><p>“I’m an idiot,” Richie said.</p><p>“Yeah.” Eddie said, lips quirking at the corners.</p><p>“You’re also an idiot,” Richie reminded him. Eddie pinched his side.</p><p>“Very true,” Eddie conceded. Just this once. “You could always tell me again, you know. I’m sober this time.”</p><p>“Yeah?” Richie asked. Too-big hands reached out, snaking around his hips, and he let Richie reel him in.</p><p>“Yeah,” he parroted, cocking his head at Richie. “So?”</p><p>“I’m in love with you, Eds.” Richie said, and Eddie smiled up at him.</p><p>“Good.” He pulled Richie in.</p><p>Kissing Richie was like coming home. Not to Derry, not to New York. Not even to LA. It was like he’d found the place right behind his ribs and filled it to the brim with warmth, pooling it and letting it diffuse into him.</p><p>Laughing like children, they sank to the floor, tension bleeding from them both as they sort of settled there and tangled in each other. It was messy and he’d feel it in the morning, but Eddie decided he wouldn’t have it any other way.</p><p>“I could come with you to New York,” he offered. “You know, take vacation.”</p><p>He could feel Richie smile against his temple as his arms tightened around Eddie’s middle. “Yeah. I’d like that.”</p><p>The best things in life were messy, he’d found. The Losers, his job, Richie. If it was messy, it meant that it was living, breathing. He could take whatever it threw at him. Richie had been right.</p><p>He was braver than he thought. It was about time he started believing it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>...please be gentle. This is my first foray into this fandom, it's...rough.</p><p>I blame bearfeathers. (You know what you did.) I can't hold on to all my Reddie feelings.</p><p>This was SUPPOSED to be a drabble. It did not listen to me. I apologize if it reads jarringly.</p><p>Thank you for reading, though!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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